Andrew Griswold, Director of EcoTravel
35 Pratt Street, Suite 201
Essex 06426
860-767-0660
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Copyright 2006 All Rights Reserved to Connecticut Audubon Society

Connecticut Audubon Society EcoTravel Visits Heart of South America

by Charles Avenengo

On the Varig flight from Kennedy to Sao Paulo and then Rio, most of Brazil's vast interests of humanity are represented. The Brazileros are traveling back and forth for family or business, other passengers are pushing on to their homelands of neighboring Paraguay and Uruguay. The Americans on-board are going on to either party in sunny Rio or prostelyze in the hinterlands.

Not us. After landing in Sao Paulo, we turn west and head 800-miles into the heart of the South American continent. Our destination- the Pantanal in the state of Mato Grasso, the world's seasonally largest freshwater wetland, twice the size of France.

It is one of the best places in the world to watch animals, especially birds and the trip is the first foray to Brazil for Connecticut Audubon Society's EcoTravel program. In the group are ten, half from Connecticut. I'm along as a scholarship winner. I'm to help find wildlife and sherpa gear about.

As we disembark from the plane and walk across Cuiaba airport's tarmac, a blast of 103-degree swelter rudely jolts us. We are 16-degrees south of the equator and it's mid-October- the austral spring, near the end of the dry season. It hasn't rained here for four months.

We are met by outfitter Christophe Hrdina. Born in Europe, Hrdina moved to Brazil as a youth and has been leading trips in the country for 30-years. Blessed with a sense of humor and Brazilian "jeito," which among other things, amounts to keeping us out of trouble. Hrdina is concerned about our personal spaces "...you people from Connecticut have big bubbles." he concludes.

After lunch, we are whisked off to the wilds. Two hours later we are watching wildlife from a 10,000-acre fazenda, a large cattle ranch that along with another 2,500 fazendas in the region owns 98% of the Pantanal. While these fazendas collectively tally about 8-million cattle, an increasing number, like ours, are beginning to supplement their income by catering to the international community that comes to see the highest concentration of wildlife in the Americas. Beyond the comforting lights of the fazendas is a vast darkness of an uncontrollable wilderness. In the Pantanal, the fazendas are mere specks of humanity.

By day, animals parade by us in a display similar to that of an African savannah. Finger-like, human-sized termite mounds and single acacia trees backdrop creatures like rheas-the South American ostrich, crab-eating foxes, marsh deer, peccaries, raccoon-like coatis, monkeys, alligators, capybaras, fish-eating bats, and birds by thousands. During this oppressive drone at the end of the dry season, all the animals are bunched at the scanty waterholes, mortal enemies enduring the heat side-by-side.

"Hyacinth macaws!" yells Andrew Griswold of Ivoryton, and all eyes turn towards a pair of stunningly beautiful blue macaws the size of geese that fly overhead.

Griswold has his hands full. As director of Connecticut Audubon Society's EcoTravel program, in addition to ensuring the events move along smoothly during the foray into this primeval wilderness, he oversees over 125-trips a year- in the state, the country and overseas- for the travel branch of the 12,000+person state Audubon Society.

Griswold leads many of the trips himself, "It's amazing work- taking people to see some of the most dramatic places and wildlife in the world." Most of the EcoTravel travelers come from within Connecticut. A month after Brazil, he must shift gears and for a third time, take ten people into the Canadian tundra to search out polar bears. Griswold's only regret: "...leaving my 6-year old son Sam behind." For now however, his attentions are occupied sorting out who's who among the animals.

The macaws land in a nearby tree and spellbind the group. In addition to being the world's largest parrots, the hyacinths are also among the most endangered. After their numbers had been reduced to a critically low level and considered endangered- an estimated 10,000 were taken from the wild in the 1990's, exploited for their feathers and the international pet trade, the macaws have been offered protection by the Brazilian government and their recovery now numbers into the mid-thousands.

Despite the Pantanal's idyllic setting, trouble lurks behind the pastoral scenes. Realization of the value in eco-tourism is slow to form. Humanity from the surrounding highlands dump uncontrolled raw sewerage, agro-chemical runoff, and mercury from gold-mining operations into the wetland. In the Pantanal itself, man-made fires, deforestation, overfishing, uncontrolled tourism, and poaching for the skin trade has taken a toll. At one point, over a quarter-million animal skins annually were being harvested out of the Pantanal alone.

When poaching was made illegal in the 1990's, the tide was stemmed, however it hasn't been until recently, when the government has actually begun stepping up anti-poaching enforcement that results are beginning to show.

"The cats are definitely back," said American Douglas Trent of Focus Tours of Santa Fe, an outfitter who has been leading expeditions into the region since 1981. Trent was leading a group from Texas when they crossed paths with the Connecticut Audubon Society tour. They reported having seen both jaguars and ocelots in the Pantanal.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after dinner, Hrdina sniffs the air and tells the group at the he is changing the plans, "Any day now comes the rains. We have to drive to the end of the Transpantaneria tomorrow, before they come and it is too late." Hrdina says even without the rain, it will be a long day.

The Transpantaneria is a plan gone wrong. Originally envisioned as a highway between Cuiaba and Corumba, it's construction began in 1973, however 12-years later, the project bogged down, and it was halted halfway at Porto Jofre. Now it is a long-ribbon of red-dirt highway that bisects for 150-km a pristine swampy plain. 126-bridges line the highway, some in a state of great disrepair. The highway is a dike that is raised above the surrounding wetland. It provides for close-up and personal wildlife observation.

The following morning the Pantanal awakens to an ominous front that has approached from the south. The bird guide, Sergio Alves, jokes that all the bad weather is brought from the Argentine. Despite the gloom, Connecticut Audubon piled into the bus to embark on the long trip. Not long thereafter, a steady rain developed. It never let up for the entire day. Alves welcomed it, letting it splash on his face, "It feels so good. I haven't felt this in four months."

Two hours later, as the ecotravlers alternated between a number of nature observation stops and negotiating the rickety bridges, at one alligator-studded bridge, the group met Dr. David Oren, an American zoologist. Harvard-educated, Oren is with the Brazilian Nature Conservancy and is a minor-Brazilian celebrity because of his pursuits of a live mapinguari, or giant sloth.

The creature is South America's equivalent of sasquatch or the yeti. Although the giant sloth has a fossil record, evidence of its existence today is scanty. Oren still has to travel two days further into the wilderness in search for the as-yet mythical creature.

By noon, both the bridges and the conditions have worsened. Many of the bridges sag under our busses' 3-ton weight. By the time we get to the Jaguar Ecological Lodge, two-thirds of the way down the Transpantaneria, it is evident that we must turn around.

At the lodge is a chalkboard illustrating the sightings around the lodge. We later found out it was Trent who had tallied these numbers. They include jaguar, ocelot, giant anteater, giant armadillo, giant river otter, maned wolf, and four types of monkeys. While we are disappointed at not being able to see these animals we are relieved to know we getting out in time before the rains makes travel impossible anywhere along the muddy road.

The steady rains continued. The road was very slippery and at one point, the bus got stuck in the muck and everyone had to throw their weight into matters to push the bus out.

It was at bridge 45 that we got into trouble. Here the flimsy boards of the bridge were out. They hadn't been out on our way here. A massive masonry truck that had tried to go around the bridge on a side trail was buried up to its rear axle. A plan was made, we needed to shore up the bridge. Some members of Connecticut Audubon Society were dispatched under the bridge to shoo away some caiman and gather up some boards that had been discarded from previous year's debacles.

I stayed on the bridge to help driver Claudio Miynou pull out a board from the bridge to lay down as a track. This was when I felt the pain in my upper eyelid. I was stung by a black-and-white wasp and the pain was immense. Another stung my ankle. And in the next few seconds the guide Alves got nailed twice, as did Miynou, the driver. Dr. James Brown, of Middlefield was stung a dozen times.

Despite the onslaught, we were able to lay down some boards, and Minyou gingerly began to inch the bus forward. We watched nervously as only flimsy efforts stood between the bus and the caiman and piranhas below. Although the boards sagged tremendously under the busses' weight, our jury-rig held. Once over safely, I was given some antihistamine and applied a mud pack to my eye, and we soberly continued back to dry warmth. We gratefully returned to the fazenda well after darkness.

The following day brought another storm. Although my eye was nearly puffed shut, everyone else was in good condition. We watched from the fazenda's veranda onto the Pixaim River as a storm lashed the drought-striken region. All were impressed by the power of the torrential downpour and the lightning. At one point, I dashed into the torrent and caught an interesting brown-and-yellow frog in the muds.

When the rains cleared, the group was loaded onto a pair of boats and traveled upriver to see a family group of giant river otters. These endearing animals are the largest members of their family as they stretch nearly six feet and weighing up to 80-pounds. After the trip, back at the lodge, one of the river guides delighted us by catching piranha directly off the dock. We eat them that evening and they were delicious.

After a sunset walk to see a giant potoo, a strange motionless yard-long bird that mimics the bark of trees its on and is virtually undetectable, Dr. Charles Munn of Tropical Nature and formerly the senior biologist for the New York Zoological Society, introduces himself. In our absence, he has checked into the fazenda and is here to study the effects of tourism on the giant river otters. He regaled us with stories of the animals we are seeing.

* * *

On the evening of the fifth day in the Pantanal. we're at Posada Alegre, the wildest of our three fazendas in which we stay. After dinner a lighting storm lashes the fazenda. No night trip on this evening. Owner Luis Cruz pulls out his laptop and shows us hundreds of slides of various forms of life he has seen at the lodge.

Eventually, when the storm clears, Ben Williams, of Pomfret Center, the outgoing board chair of the Connecticut Audubon Society and a former headmaster of Pomfret School in the state's Quiet Corner, has set up a night light. An amateur entomologist, Williams is seeking nocturnal insects, especially moths, and his vigils lead him back out to the nightlight repeatedly throughout the evening. During one check, he hears a jaguar roar from out in the dark. The rest of us are so exhausted, we sleep through it.

After shaking out a tarantula from my shoe the following morning, I went on a walk with Luis Cruz. After pointing out black howler monkeys and a dwarf brocket deer fawn, I tell him about Williams hearing the jaguar roar the night before. Cruz tells me there are six species of wild cats on the property. "They are everywhere." He doesn't care for them at all. Cruz is, after all, a rancher, and as a naturalist, he is far more concerned about the 14-species of frogs that he has caught on his ranch. He is sure he is closing in on a 15th. He tells me the one I had caught earlier in the week was a little known family of narrow-mouthed frogs currently under study.

I wonder greedily if I have found something new to science. Highly unlikely, but like so much of this country, due to its size, studies of many of the various animal groups are barely underway and in their infancy, so it's possible.

Then it's time to leave the Panatanal. The party will return to a luxury hotel, back in civilization before returning to the states. On the way out, with the guarded entrance gate to the Pantanal in view, Rodney Williams, of Greenwood, California and brother of Ben, looking off to the side of the Transpantaneria, yells out, "Snake!" and there it is, motionless, but watching us through its ageless reptilian eyeslits, our final gift- an anaconda. This one is small, only 11-feet long.

A fitting conclusion to a trip that included a dozen mammal and reptile species each and over 200-bird species, including 80-new ones for Griswold. When asked back at his EcoTravel desk in Essex about no jaguar sightings. "Oh, we're going back in. This was only our first trip to Brazil. " said Griswold with a faraway, wistful smile.

The EcoTravel department of the Connecticut Audubon Society conducts day, weekend, domestic, and international travel throughout the year. For further information on its planned trip to the Pantanal for October 2005 and any of their other trips, their numbers are 860-767-2848 or 800-996-8747 or e-mail ecotravel@ctaudubon.org.

Founded in 1898, Connecticut Audubon Society is an independent, statewide, non-profit organization dedicated to providing excellence in environmental education, encouraging the conservation of the state's natural resources and advocating for enlightened leadership on ecological matters. Connecticut Audubon Society manages 19 sanctuaries around the state preserving over 2,400 acres of open space. Visit the Connecticut Audubon Society web site for membership and more information: www.ctaudubon.org or call 1-800-996-8747.